


Covered in Blood and Dust (we watched the world burn)

by Severa



Series: Aftermath [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Background Relationships, Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Fallout, Family Dynamic, Gen, Slow Burn, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-06-30 14:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15753861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/Severa
Summary: On the way back home from Titan, Tony faces Thor's worst nightmare and brings it back home. Thor tries to find closure after Ragnarok, grappilng with the burden of putting his people to rest.





	1. Lost in Space

**Author's Note:**

> A four part series inspired by _Avengers: Infinity War_ (2018) and Kieron Gillen's _Journey Into Mystery_ (2011). I hope you like a slow burn fix-it fic, heavy on Asgardian family dysfunction, magic, and super light on romance. It's time to let Loki shine.

Of one thing, Tony Stark was sure: there was no keeping Nebula from doing whatever it was she wanted to do. Between his busted suit and her homicidal mania, they had a handful of rations, half a clue, and a spaceship – a spaceship that she very much meant to strand him on, by the way – and if it came to a fight, she'd probably win. Being half-robot and all, she had the upper hand against his soft, fleshy, feverish self. Floating through the interstellar clouds, it had occured to him that she could've stranded him on Titan instead; and what a silver lining that was, being stranded in a floating tin can of rations, instead of being stranded on an unknown, oxygenated wasteland.

“I’m going to Vormir,” she told him, stuffing supplies from various overhead compartments into a small duffle bag. Tony lurched to hold himself steady on a support beam over a porthole window, nauseous. His vacuum-sealed, space-MRE hadn’t quite settled since their last jump through hyperspace. “You are not.”

“You’re not leaving me here.”

“I am.”

“We’ve got to get back to Earth—” His heartbeat raced through his veins, pounding loud enough to distract him from the way his hands were trembling.

“ _You_ have to get to Terra.” She pulled a root out of a small refrigerator, considering it before she took a sizable bite and shoved the rest in her bag. “My sister is on Vormir.”

“Listen—”

Desperate times called for desperate measures, but activating Bleeding Edge? Bad idea.

Nebula darted across the hold like a night-terror, bodily slamming Tony into the wall behind him before he could get a full repulsor formed around his hand. Stars blinked across his vision, the frame of the porthole digging into his side. It pressed dangerously close to the stab wound Thanos had left him – he grit his teeth against the white-hot pain, trying to twist his body away. Her knife scraped carelessly across a vein of nanotech that scrambled around his neck defensively.

“No. You listen, Terran.”

Knocking her arm away earned him another flash of pain; she was quicker, grabbing his forearm and hauling him around, folding it against his back. Mechanics whirred as bone scraped on bone, teeth-rattling pain chasing up from his elbow to his shoulder. Nanoparticles scrambled between her hand and Tony, trying to pry him free as she shoved his face into cold metal.

“My sister is dead.” Over his shoulder, two terrifying black eyes drilled into him. He grunted against the wall, flexing his hand as a gauntlet bled around it. Adrenaline slowed his senses; he felt Nebula shift, slightly off balance, leaning heavily against him. “But not gone. I will find her.” Nausea rolled through him again. A timer ticked down in his mind. “We will kill our father. _Thanos_. Together.”

Warmth finally spread over his palm, radiating blue-white light. Pushing himself off the wall as hard as he could, the repulsor exploded into her chest, knocking her off him. When she stumbled, he spun, whirling around and hitting her again. It lifted her straight off her feet and over the observation table as Bleeding Edge's gauntlets and helmet snapped around him like a coffin. Thanos’ name drummed in his ears.

“I need to get back to Earth.” Breathing heavy, he kept his arm held high, cautiously on the offensive. “But I’m kinda outta my element here, Smurfette.”

Mercifully, the suit disguised his horror when she grappled up the side of the table, her bones snapping back together with sickening clarity. Snap, crackle, pop; Nebula pieced herself back together like a high-tech zombie, posture settling predatorially. That wasn’t something he was ever going to forget.

“You can still go to Voromir–”

“Vormir.”

“Vormir. Whatever.” Miniature repulsors braceleted his wrists when she stalked closer, framing him with ammunition. The nanotech housing glowed like the Tesseract on a Christmas Tree. “You can go wherever the hell you want to go. Just get me home first.”

“Why?” she asked, pacing around the table between them, sword raised. The tinny sound of her voice reverberated in the hold. “What makes you think I care?”

“You don’t.” His helmet snapped back in a reckless display of bravery, revealing his crazed resolve. “But if you wanna get that big, purple bastard, there’s a green one I gotta talk to.”

* * *

It took about an hour to talk the crazy out of Nebula’s expression, but when Tony managed it, she conceded that if he’d managed to make her Father bleed, he wasn’t worth abandoning in space. Before hopping out on the last spare spacecraft attached to this monstrous ship – the _Bataran,_ she called it _–_ she set and locked the autopilot to take him home.

“You won the coin toss of eternity, Stark,” she told him, sitting back in her pod like a Queen on a throne. “Consider yourself lucky.”

Hours later, once she and her escape craft had jettisoned out of sight, he sat on the observation table with his legs crossed, staring at a glass monitor rotating a lazy rendering of Earth on its axis.

 _Rocket Racoon: LOCATED,_ read the only string of English text. His coordinates pinged to a very convenient spot over the African continent. Five other trackers blinked a slow, steady pace of red underneath it, each failed connection haunting him like a panic attack, edging his limits.

_“I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, Sir, I don’t want to die.”_

Tony closed his eyes, sucking in a breath through his teeth. Not the time, not the place. He’d make it right. He had to make it right…

_“This was the only way.”_

The Wizard had trusted him to make it right.

Pressing his forehead into his hands, elbows propped on either knee, he focused on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This wasn’t the end. Not yet. This was just another catastrophe he’d have to deal with. A new, bigger-than-Ultron sized problem he’d have to fix. Every time the world had ended (or almost ended), he’d found a way around it. _They’d_ found a way around it. Once he got back, everything would start falling back into place.

 _“Don’t waste your life,”_ Yinsen had said. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Exhaling slowly, he started a slow countdown back from twenty and tried to push down the memories. He’d lost. Again. But _they’d_ never lost before, and this time it was a big-league defeat. Millions of people were dead. Billions, probably. Blown away like sand in a storm.

Zemo had destroyed the Avengers from the inside, rooting out their secrets and putting them on display for everyone else to see. He’d played Steve and Tony like fiddles down in Georgia. But this? Would it have been any different if the Avengers were still together?

Maybe, Tony told himself. But maybe didn’t matter – what mattered was _now_ , and what would happen in the aftermath. He'd been through worse, right? He could survive this.

_Drowning, drowning, dunked again, back into the wet, the dark, the iron-hot burning in his lungs— Yanked coughing, gasping, sputtering as a magnet sparked in his chest, two dangerous cords drawn back to a car battery that kept him from cardiac arrest— There was dirt in his lungs, his eyes, his heart, his everywhere—_

_A portal ripped open in the sky, howling his name in a tornado of blue-white energy. A nuke on his back, sent with love, swallowed into the dark with him— Pepper didn’t answer her phone, but there was no air, he couldn’t breathe, he could see— An atom split and the Universe unraveled in sparks of light, a fire burning where it shouldn’t, couldn’t— The darkness, whole, complete, swallowed him down, down, he was falling down, down— Flying dead-stick in a tin can, rattling around inside armor that meant nothing— He couldn’t protect her, couldn’t protect him, couldn’t save the world— Loki laughed—_

_Wanda Maximoff took his mind, picked apart his sanity like a frayed pair of jeans—_

_“If you die, I’d feel like that’s on me,” he told a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. God, he sounded like Howard. He didn’t want to be, couldn’t be, shouldn’t be, wouldn’t be—_

_“I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go, Sir, I don’t want to die, I’m sorry—"_

Choking again on his own fear, Tony realized that, no, he hadn’t been through worse. This was the worst. It would always be the worst. Pete was dead because of him; because he couldn’t protect him, like he’d promised Aunt May; because Thanos didn’t care if a spunky boy from Queens meant more to him than all the Avengers lumped together.

 _Thanos._ That name pounded in his head as loudly as his heartbeat. _Thanos, Thanos, Thanos._

_“All that, for a drop a blood?”_

The world spun. Tony bent low, hiding his face in his lap.

_Blood glimmered on Thanos’ fingertip. A drop of blood, a single drop of blood. All that for nothing—_

_In a dark, black room, Whiplash smiled at him. Palladium drummed in Tony’s heart, in his ears, in his thoughts— He was dying, desperate, angry and brimming. Ivan Vanko just kept smiling._

_“If you could make God bleed…”_ said the memory of an enemy, and the world slowed in epiphany. In hope. “… _people would cease to believe in Him.”_

Forcing his lungs full of air, Tony swung his legs over the edge of the table to get back on his feet. His hands trembled. The voices of his nightmares were drowned out by someone else’s.

 _“If you get knocked down, get back up,”_ Steve Rogers had said, a lifetime ago, _“If you die, walk it off.”_

* * *

It was a lot easier to get into the groove of a good old-fashioned bender when there was no day or night to tell you what time it was.

Tony Stark was sitting on the floor of an impressively well stocked arsenal in the lower level of the _Bataran_ , playing with tools he barely understood and taking apart weapons that made his old job look like child’s play. There were empty plastic bags of foodstuff scattered around, half-full cups of various liquids stacked on shelves next to small devices he hadn’t gotten his hands on yet.

“That one,” Tony muttered to no one, gesturing vaguely in the direction of some scattered parts behind him. Nanotech particles rushed out of their housing, crawling down his arm before jumping off his hand. They rolled over themselves into a ball to collect the piece he requested, shining in reds and golds. He’d damaged most of the suit on Titan, but he could make a bare-bones armor if he had to.

The question of the day was this: is it an antique folding camera or a bomb? Or maybe it was both. Both was probably the safer answer, Tony decided, picking up the device and turning it over in his hands. Far as he could tell, you strapped it to yourself and took aim through the little glass sight. Why the framing was built like an accordion, he couldn’t fathom, but the interactive glass was pretty neat.

When his nano-assistant dropped the welder-unwelder into his hand – he was making up names for things, unable to read the alien languages of the _Bataran_ – he had the sudden, self-preserving idea that, “Y’know, maybe it’s not the best idea to play with bombs. In space. Think I’ll pass.”

Pepper would be proud.

Sighing deeply, he scooted across the floor to lean against a cabinet, wiping what he hoped was grease off his face with a dirtied rag. Talking to himself was a recent habit, probably not indicative of good mental health, but he was alone. Who was here to judge?

Absently, he opened one of the cabinet drawers, thumbing through the tablets stacked inside. Judging by the corner-right pictures and grids of text, most of them were personnel files. Maybe criminal records. Swiping across the screen brought plenty of other data to light – pictures, videos, depictions of suspicious acts – and he found himself looking away from the screen when one subject lunged towards an innocent-looking figure. Yeah, definitely criminal records.

A small, black rectangle of familiar tech caught his eye in the drawer, nearly hidden underneath a bag of brightly colored chips. He brushed aside the snacks and took it in hand, settling back down on the floor and putting the tablets to the side. Unwinding the earbuds wrapped around it, trying not to think too much into it, he thumbed the center button.

A Zune?

 _God,_ Tony thought blearily. “Who were you people?”

Bounty-hunting, Microsoft-loving, antique-collecting weirdos, he decided, scrolling idly through the song selection. It wasn’t like they could answer him. For all the rooting and scavenging he’d done in the last couple of hours (days?), he wasn’t any closer to understanding the people who’d lived here. How did a kid from Missouri get into outer space in the first place? With a _Zune_? Why was one of the rooms wall-to-wall vines with tree leaves raked into the corner like it was August? What exactly was a Drax, and who had the knives fetish?

_“Well, for starters, I’m Star-Lord.”_

Tony jolted so violently that Bleeding Edge reacted intuitively, enveloping him in momentary darkness before the HUD flickered to life. The Zune clattered to the ground. An arc reactor whined in his chest, thrumming with dangerous energy. Warnings immediately started flashing about compromised systems, the suit spread aluminum thin.

Peter Quill stood in the middle of the armory, smiling like there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world.

_“Cool it, bro. Never seen a hologram before?”_

Tony’s hands trembled inside the suit. With the crisis averted and his sanity in question, the helmet retracted and Quill shrugged, leaning against the table.

“What the hell?”

“ _It’s just protocol, dude.”_

Shaking, he managed to stand, clinging to some of the piping on the wall to pull himself up off the ground. Nanopartucles rushed back into the housing, leaving him bare and exposed.

“Protocol? Hologram? You’re…” Pointing at him accusatorily, reality slowly spun into place. “You’re a hologram.”

Not-Quill nodded. The longer Tony focused on it, the more it seemed to shake, stuttering in occasional pixel lines of blue.

_“Nebula turned on Babysitter. And you haven’t eaten anything but Zarg Nuts in three sleep cycles.”_

This was beyond his holo-displays at home – Quill looked _real,_ like he could reach out and touch him. His hand phased right through its chest when he tried. Holo-Quill didn’t seem to mind.

 _“Yeah, ever since Groot went sapling, Quill set the visualizer to himself so he could scare Drax. I used to be part of the security system – atmospheric monitoring and emergency systems, specifically, but Rocket made me this after,”_ it blinked very purposefully, then reported, “ _Mission Log: Talking Planet Douchebag.”_ It blinked again, then smiled in a very off-putting way. _“Someone needed to keep an eye on Groot case he got left alone again.”_

“…Okay.”

_“Okay.”_

Holo-Quill’s attention suddenly drifted, like a program redirected. Focusing intently on one of the screens behind Tony, its irises stuttered with pixels before a quiet, pulsing beat of music started floating through the ship.

“Rubberband Man?” Tony asked incredulously. He pulled the zipper of his track suit up higher, folding his arms nervously across his chest. 

 _“Yeah.”_ Quill’s head clipped back into place, focus returned. _“Listen, my job’s to make sure the designated target doesn’t keel over and die before a qualified adult returns. I took some scans when I booted up. Monitored your vitals, your habits. My conclusion was without intervention, your mental state would continue to decline.”_

This thing definitely didn’t talk like Quill, Tony thought. It tried to replicate it in the casual, but failed when it came to communicating anything specific.

“…Creepy AI babysitter program, got it.” He’d had some experience with those. “Thanks, I guess.”

_“No problem.”_

Satisfied, the hologram looked around the room. Lights flickered on as it walked around, hovering a few inches above the ground, hitching its trousers to bend down and look at Tony’s projects.

_“That looks fun, I guess. Try not to blow us up.”_

“That’s the plan.”

How much weirder could this place get?

 _“Well, we gotta’bout six more cycles ‘til we get to Terra and Rocket, but I think I should stick around so you don’t go bonkers.”_ The visualization of Star-Lord looked up at him, flickering to its feet. _“Got any questions?”_

* * *

Tony was dead asleep at the dinner table when the ship lurched and sent him tumbling out of his chair. Smacking his head on the floor was historically his least favorite way to wake up, but it was definitely familiar. Rolling down a rapid, cold, metal incline before a spaceship’s stabilizers kicked on? Not so much.

“Shit- _fuck_ -what?!”

Empty cans littered down on him before the engines roared, leveling out the ship before they promptly sputtered and died. Tony had managed to hit the wall feet-first in his delirium. Bleeding Edge itched all over his body.

Blearily, he waved away the suit, nanoparticles scattering back home as quickly as they had initialized. Today was not off to a great start – or tonight, whatever it was. Blinking in the dark common room, a couple of red lights flashed overhead, illuminating the exit door. Tony groaned as he pushed himself up onto his feet, cradling his left side gingerly. Despite the suit’s medical capabilities, it was only supposed to be a band-aid for the problem; he needed to get his stab wound checked out. Soon.

“Quill?!”

He swiped the tablet he’d stolen from Gamora’s room off the ground as he scrambled back up to his feet, steadying himself on the table’s edge.

 _“Don’t worry, man, we’re good,”_ was its response over intercom. _“But you should come check this out.”_

They had three more sleep cycles before they’d get to Earth. Now was not the time for issues. If the _Bataran_ was damaged and Quill went offline, he’d be flying dead stick in outer space. There was no phoning home from here.

“I’m coming,” Tony grumbled, grabbing an abandoned thermos that had tumbled into his chair. The dregs burned all the way down his throat. “I’m coming.”

When he stumbled into the cockpit, still barely awake, he found Holo-Quill sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. The controls were moving between its legs without it touching them.

_“Looks like we ran into some space junk. Normal stuff. Wreckage, trash, miscellaneous crap. Autopilot’s programmed to clear it out and move on.”_

Mechanical arms worked in front of the hull, carefully pushing away a large metal chunk of what appeared to be another spaceship. Tony lowered himself into the pilot’s seat as the _Bataran_ continued to move, pivoting to compensate for the larger craft’s size. Lasers cut red lines through metal to clear it away in manageable pieces.

“But?”

 _“But coordinates match a distress signal we responded to about a week ago. Security logs indicate the Guardians retrieved a survivor. Mission Log…”_ Quill flickered. _“Mission Log: Pirate Angel.”_

“Why do I care?” He kicked his legs up on the console, careful not to jar any controls. Holo-Quill tilted its head and the arms of the ship mimiced him, pushing at scattered chunks of debris. “You said it was a week ago. No one’s still…”

Whatever Tony thought to say abruptly cut off. When the shattered pieces cleared away, he saw this place for what it was.

A graveyard.

 _“Thanos,”_ Holo-Quill supplied. The name sounded strange spoken so calmly. _“He attacked a refugee ship. Asgardians."_

Corpses floated in zero gravity, not so different from bodies in water. Cold settled over Tony like a piece of armor, creeping down his throat and into his heart.

“Asgardians.” The word was barely a whisper, brimming with fear.

Hundreds of people drifting. Plates of broken armor shining on warrior’s chests, their weapons discarded. Colorful streaks of robes floating off bodies. All of them, scattered around a ship that was broken in half, the vessel burning with small flickers of purple flame. It was impossible to not know what they were – _who_ they were.

Tony stood in a hurry, taking the steep steps down to the lowest seat. A pane of glass was all that stood between him and the open universe. When his mind finally caught up to the shock – Was that a child’s body floating off into space? Was that a mother holding her baby? – the world started spinning in emergency mode.

“Refugee? Survivor?” Tony latched onto the word like a lifeline. “Who survived this?”

 _“Big ol’ hunk of a dude,”_ Holo-Quill reported casually. Then, _“Thor.”_

Security footage flickered to life on the glass in front of him. Thor, unconscious, being pulled in through the airlock; waking up after Antenna Girl played with his brain; stumbling upright, scaring the shit out of everyone on board, asking who the hell they were.

Miserably, Tony shuddered with relief, leaning his forehead against the glass. Good ol’ Pointbreak, too stubborn to die.

 _“All right, path’s clear.”_ The ship veered to the left, spinning away from the other. _“Not any damage I care about. Re-routing. Might wanna sit down, Mr. Stark, we gotta dodge around all this junk.”_

They should just go, Tony knew. They should leave. Earth was close. Pepper was waiting to tear his head off and, hopefully, the Avengers were too. He had to get home. Let all this be what it was.

But he couldn’t.

Thanos had plunged the Universe into death. Wiped everything away, as if half of all existence didn’t matter. He hadn't even had the decency to leave anything behind to mourn, to bury or burn.

“How long would it take?”

If Thor was still alive, if his entire world had gone refugee, he deserved at least this much.

_“Gotta be more specific, man. I’m old tech.”_

“To get the bodies. All of them. How long?”

A momentary pause. The _Bataran_ swung back to face the destroyed refugee ship, red lines projected on the windshield to pin-point bodies and lock-in their location as Holo-Quill ran calculations.

_“Six hours and twenty-three minutes. The added weight and extra load on the atmosphere regulator will slow us down by thirty-nine hours. Twelve if we do some jumps.”_

“Atmosphere regulator?”

_“It’s your nose when they thaw out.”_

Tony swallowed. “Point taken.”

* * *

With the air-lock initialized and the ramp of the loading bay extended down from the belly of the _Bataran,_ Tony drifted out in open space, floating through wreckage. A tether kept him attached to the ship as it maneuvered safely through all the damage, wading through the corpses among the stars. Drax’s spacewalk gear kept track of his oxygen levels as he grabbed onto bodies, guiding them back towards the bay with some careful direction. Bleeding Edge was too busy doing something else to play Iron Man, right now.

 _Bring out your dead,_ Tony thought morbidly, pushing another soldier towards the _Bataran._ Red and gold nano-bots floated by him, dragging a young woman’s body along. It was hard not to look at the gash across her chest, oozing bubbles of black blood in zero gravity.

 _“Well, I think I’m due for an upgrade, ‘cause you’re blowing my calculations into the next quadrant,”_ Holo-Quill’s voice crackled with static inside his helmet. _“Couple more left, Mr. Stark, then you can hole up in the armory and we’ll be on our way.”_

More nano-bots roamed out of the ship, adding to the small fleet of guidance drones Tony had spawned. They ventured out farther than he dared, using miniaturized repulsors to maneuver through open space. Four or five of them would latch onto the same body and guide them into the flight deck before scattering back out to grab another one.

_Three hundred and sixty-one._

Tony hooked the arm of a gigantic man in his own, thoughtlessly grabbing the sword that moved to slip out of his stiff hands. Low oxygen level warnings flashed across the glass of his helmet, prompting him to escort this one back to the ship himself.

“Still no sign of a hammer?” Swords, shields, and strange looking weapons were in abundance, most left behind to drift away, but there wasn’t a single indication that Mjolnir was anywhere to be found. Thor hadn’t had it in the security footage.

(And there were other things he hadn't had, too, like half his hair and an eye, but Tony had already forgotten, all those details lost in the shock of today, as many other things would be. What did his hair matter if half the universe was gone? What was more important: his eye or his hammer?)

_“Still nothin’. Sorry, man.”_

If that damn hammer was gone, they were well and rightly screwed. Assuming Thor was still around to use it, of course, but Tony shoved that possibility to the back burner. Until proven otherwise, everyone was still alive. Optimism didn’t have any place at the end of the world, but for the sake of his sanity he had to believe there was a light at the end of this tunnel.

The moment he crossed through the force field airlock, the large body at his side (and the sword in his other hand) were instant dead weight; Tony jerked downwards with a thud, falling squarely on the broad chest of this dark-skinned soldier. The golden broadsword clattered to the ground with a racket.

“Oh, oh gross.”

Heaving himself off the corpse and scrambling away from the pile of bodies, Tony hip-checked the observation table and pressed the button on his forearm that collapsed Drax’s suit back into the bracer. A different sort of nanotechnology was prevalent on the ship, but only Tony’s bots hustled around, carting their new passengers into airlocked rooms that the _Bataran_ could chill to freezing temperatures. The initial retrieval group still lay side-by-side on the flight deck – they were stacked kindly on top of one another, laying in tiered columns with their shoulders on the bellies of the bodies beneath them. One nano-bot buzzed around them, trying in vain to close their frozen eyes.

The hipster-looking Asgardian that Tony had dropped lay in the small walkway that remained, staring listlessly at the ceiling. His long threads of thick hair were matted with frost, clinging to his shoulders and face. Black-red blood stained his chest in disks of ice.

“And I thought Thor was massive,” he muttered in disbelief. Curiously, he found himself drawn into his gaze. Gold and gilded, shining to spite death. “Can’t imagine what it took to bring you down, big guy.”

 _“All right,”_ Holo-Quill’s voice echoed over intercom, the visualizer currently turned off. Tony was more comfortable with voices in the ceiling than holograms creeping up on him. _“Looks like that’s it.”_

The last few nano-bots zoomed in through the airlock, carrying smaller bodies he refused to look at. Pneumatic releases hissed as the loading dock began to fold back up.

 _“Better get somewhere warm, Mr. Stark.”_ More hissing from the vents, followed by the abrupt chill of air conditioning. _“I can lock you down in the armory, nice and toasty. Like Christmas at Grandma’s.”_

Tony turned around, rooting out a blanket from the compartments over the table.

“Do you even know what Christmas is?”

_“According to conversation logs, it involves breaking and entering and a dude in a red su—”_

“Rhetorical,” he shivered, huddling up under the blanket as the ship began to close itself up. Something gold glimmered at the end of the platform as it folded up, hooked on its edge for a moment before it got flicked like a marble in a pinball machine. “It was– _What the fuck_?”

Two familiar, terrifying horns floated into the _Bataran_ as the loading dock sealed shut with a hiss. Fumbling through some sort of reaction, Tony’s heart jumped up into his throat as the last few nanoparticles swarmed over his chest protectively, half-deployed, circling around the housing in a storm.

Loki’s helmet hovered inside the airlock like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

 _New York, burning. A portal in the sky. “You will all fall...”_ His heart beat triple-time in his chest, hooked by a long, curved stretch of gold metal, yanked down into the pit of his stomach. _He was falling, falling again, thrown out the side of his own tower and saved by JARVIS._ Blood rushed in his ears, deafening. _A metal clink as Loki’s spear hit the arc reactor. Tony joked through his terror._ He couldn’t breathe. _“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll have that drink now.”_

The airlock sealed and pressurized. Loki’s helmet clattered to the ground with a graceless clang, reverberating noisily throughout the hold. The sound of it was enough to make him suck in a breath, gasping on the brink of anxiety.

Loki was dead. Thor had told them as much over a couple of drinks, explaining exactly what had happened in London the last time he’d been on Earth.

_“Stark, you all right?”_

Tony faltered back against the table, steadying himself with one arm.

“I–” Slowly, he backed away. Reality threatened to sink in, but he swallowed it down, forcing himself to stay in the numb headspace that kept him from going insane. “…Yeah. Let’s go home, Quill.”

Tony locked himself in the armory and didn’t look back.

A nano-bot on deck struggled to close Loki’s frozen eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting schedule should be once a week. Please leave a review and let me know you what you think! (Part one and two are already complete, currently working on three and four.)  
> Buy me [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/severawrites) if you'd like, or go visit me on [Tumblr](https://wicked-midnight.tumblr.com)!


	2. Homecoming

The armory door sealed behind Tony with a deafening hiss, sequestering him away from the horrors on the other side. His breath fogged the last bit of chilled air that clung to him, quickly warmed away by the quarantine, but no amount of heat could help with his numbness. That sinking sensation shrouded him, crawling, burrowing underneath his skin in a perpetual buzz of white noise. Bodies and death, cold and silence... Everything got a little grey and soft around the edges, a little less clear, and he lost track of time completely.

He came to a few hours later, staring blankly ahead at a locker with hot air blasting him in the face. He’d put himself on the floor, leaning up against the wall next to the door. Someone was saying something.

“Huh?” he heard himself ask, and Holo-Quill repeated himself.

 _“The logs?”_ it tried, and then sighed when Tony didn’t catch on. _"The logs. From the ship? I recovered some from the wreckage.”_

“Oh.”

Something crinkled between his fingers as he thought about that. Looking down, he found himself holding a silver foil bag of dried something. Fruit, maybe? Carefully, he poked at the purple beans with one finger. Where had he gotten these?

 _“You wanna watch ‘em?”_ Holo-Quill prompted, startling Tony when he flickered into existence a few feet in front of him.

“Christ!”

 _“Sorry.”_ It wasn’t sorry. Holo-Quill leaned back against real-Quill’s locker, crossing his arms. “ _You’re wigging out, man. Gotta stay with me.”_

“I...” Tony sighed. The bag of foodstuff dropped into his lap as he pulled the blankets further over his shoulders, trying to get comfortable. He scratched absently at his stubble, growing quickly out of style. “What type of logs?”

 _“Security. And Captain’s.”_ Holo-Quill added, shrugging. _"Kind of.”_

“Kind of?”

_"Looks like they weren’t worried about keeping one dude in charge.”_

“Huh.”

His gut said no. All he’d be watching were refugee saying their last words, not knowing what was coming for them - desperate people just hoping to get somewhere safe, droning on about daily reports and the state of their ship. It was the type of morbid shit people posted online; the mundane _before,_ before the terrible _after._ Tony didn’t need to see it, didn’t need to know the faces of people who were about to get kicked while they were down.

But Thor would want to. Stubborn and loyal as he was, Thor would demand to see it, so Tony felt like he had to watch it for himself.

“Sure,” he felt himself say, because no one deserved to carry something like that alone.

Holo-Quill nodded and flickered out, briefly leaving him alone in the armory. A new scene quickly took his place: a control room, or something like one, where an unfamiliar kid sat at a clunky console. The viewpoint was angled and skewed from the left, recorded from his side instead of head-on, allowing for a narrow view of Noah’s Ark and its Captain. If there were more people in the room, they were obscured by the kid’s body.

Through all his shock filled hours of the last few sleep cycles - nights, days, _whatever_ \- each riddled with forgotten details and missing time, when Tony looked back on his exodus through space, he’d remember these people clearly. The young, tan soldier with shaggy brown hair and golden plate armor, hardly older than twenty and too young to be fighting; a dark skinned woman with white makeup around her eyes, bottle in hand and feet up on the console; an older, silver haired gentleman who got right to the point; a purple-skinned something with a triangular helmet that spoke a language Quill had to translate. These were the last voices of Asgard and Somewhere Else. It’d be impossible not to remember them.

Still, what they had to say - if they said anything at all - wasn’t exactly riveting.

Tony fell asleep somewhere between _“We’re running low on water,”_ and _“Then it’s a good thing I’m an alcoholic,”_ as the logs ran their course, its cast of characters firmly established in shift rotations. But sleep didn’t last long - it rarely did, these days, but it wasn’t the usual nightmares that woke him. It was the sound of a someone familiar clearing its throat, pulling his attention out of abstract dreams of portals and stones.

_“Where’s little girl?”_

If Tony were being honest with himself, which he usually wasn’t, that voice felt more like being tazed out of a blackout bender than being woken up. He jolted so sharply that he nearly sprained his own neck with his blanket, yanking it down in surprise. At first he thought it might be a dream, but there was no mistaking him -- those broad shoulders and a small, disproportionate head, supported by massive legs in super-stretch pants. There was a small, fragile-looking bowl in one of his green hands, featured with the way the camera angle had changed. Now Tony looked down on the scene rather than alongside it, an overhead angle shown instead of a video log.

He had an eagle’s eye view of the Hulk lumbering around wearing nano-tech pants (his nano-tech pants!) and nothing made sense.

Then the world reeled as Tony realized that the Big Guy was _talking_. Everything paused when he realized who he was talking to.

 _“...Asleep.”_ The image of Loki said nervously, turned slightly in his chair with one leg crossed over the other. He was visibly tense, hands pressed flat against his thighs. _“She’s enspelled to rest. By Thor’s request,”_ he added hastily. _“I’ve taken her place in the meantime.”_

Tony blinked widely, then squinted, trying to take the scene in. Maybe he was still dreaming. He had to be.

Dreaming or not, the Hulk hologram grunted, adjusting his weight from one foot to the other. Loki stared at the him the same as he was now, hesitantly expectant. It looked like the Big Guy was… thinking. About what, Tony couldn’t imagine, but he was staring at the little bowl in his hand.

_“Hungry?”_

_“Pardon me?”_

_“Eat.”_ Hulk offered out the bowl. _“For her. Now for you.”_

 _“I...”_ Loki’s fingers twitched on his leg. Tony expected him to reject him, to curse or say something vile, but instead it was just a nervous, _“How... thoughtful. Thank you.”_

His stomach flipped. Loki’s voice sounded as uneasy as he felt, but he gingerly took the bowl when the Hulk stepped forward. It suddenly looked quite large in his small, careful hands.

There was an awkward, pregnant silence, before Loki carefully asked, _“You’ve not poisoned it, have you?”_ and, horrifyingly, Hulk smirked.

_“Hulk no coward.”_

The projection of Loki looked like he was going to smile, but the expression was promptly lost around the fork in his mouth. The Big Guy nodded with approval, smacking one hand on his knee as he folded his legs to sit on the ground.

_What the hell?_

There were no words to explain this. He remembered the story about the Quinjet getting sucked into a portal out in orbit, something about Thor and Asgard, but nothing about _this._ He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

_“You don’t have to...”_

_"Hulk make company.”_

_“...All right, then.”_

Tony leaned back against the wall, shaking his head in genuine bafflement. There was an extended silence on screen - on hologram? - as Loki slowly turned himself back around, picking at his food as he monitored various screens. He continued to eat sparingly and Hulk sat patiently, if not awkwardly, pushing his fingers through his hair at one point, then itching his chin.

Why wasn’t this weird? Why wasn’t this tense? Why was the Hulk so calm and why wasn’t Loki already dead? How was this even happening? What happened to _“Puny God”_ and playing Whack-A-Mole with would-be conquers?

Tony was spiraling in rapid-fire thought when Loki set his meal in his lap, mindfully pressing a blue button, and broke the silence.

_“Might I ask a question?”_

The holographic Hulk nodded, glancing up, stuttering a little around the edges.

 _"Will all your Avengers be so… forgiving?”_ Loki wondered. His words hiccupped with audio corruption and Tony swallowed the urge to throw up.

_Forgiving._

Forgive _him_?

Bruce had given him the quick rundown back at Wizard HQ: Thanos was coming and he wanted some magic stones, the same ones Loki had wanted, which was why he’d come to New York to get them. To give them to Thanos. They were the same things that had made JARVIS into the Vision; that had made Wanda and Pietro enhanced. The invasions, the aliens, the magic blue boxes and portals - all of them led back to the stones. To Loki. He’d been the reason a nuke had launched into space, why he’d fallen down, down, _down_ , until the darkness had swallowed him whole. Why Phil Coulson was dead and gone and why Ultron had ever been created. Loki was the beginning of his worst nightmares and Thanos was the end, but he wanted to be forgiven?

Tony was stewing in a million unkind thoughts, his forehead pressed into the side of his hand when he heard the Hulk say, _“Hulk not forgive.”_

He looked up underneath his palm in time to see Loki’s pixeled expression compress, turned towards the Hulk, wariness spread across in thin lines before a blank wash chased it all away.

 _“I see,”_ he said flatly, but Hulk kept on.

 _“But Hulk understand.”_ He put his hands on his knees, pushing himself up to his feet. Loki leaned back in his chair carefully, eyes never straying away. _“Earth hate Hulk, but Hulk still protect. Hulk strongest Avenger.”_ He beat his chest once with his fist, proud. The projection shuddered. _“You protect you. Protect Thor. The Revengers, Asgardians. Loki…”_ he paused with genuine consideration, _“Loki smartest Revenger.”_

Loki, much like Tony, regarded the Hulk with some bewilderment.

_“You’re too kind.”_

_“Stay Revenger, stay good.”_ He nodded sharply, stern and confident. _“Hulk protect. But!”_ Loki’s fingers twitched on his legs as the Hulk pointed at him, encroaching on his personal space to jab his chest. He cringed. _“Like Hulk said, puny God gets smashed like Thanos if he hurts Thor. Or Hilde. Or Banner. Or Avengers.”_

_“Understood.”_

_“Good,”_ Hulk huffed, pulling back.

Tony was left to watch his friend walk off screen with bizzare wonderment, barely registering Loki’s last, soft response.

 _“...Hilde?”_ he wondered, and then his image flickered away, back to the video log and the silver-haired soldier, who looked like he might fall asleep at his post.

 _You got the right idea, bud,_ Tony thought distantly, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. And here he’d thought he’d seen everything.

Apparently not.

* * *

Sitting on the floor of the armory, bundled in blankets, Tony suddenly dropped the ray gun he’d found in Quill’s locker, startled out of his tinkering by a buzzing in his chest. It was a literal, body shaking vibration that buzzed in his sternum, where his last few nanobots flew like angry bees in an arc reactor hive. It was reminiscent of how the original reactor used to spaz around super magnets (something he’d fixed for later models) and his panicked reaction was much the same. The fact that Bleeding Edge was doing anything autonomous at all was a sign that something had changed - a sign that they were close to home.

With just a thought, a thread of nano-bots crawled out of his chest in earnest, stringing up to his ear. He tried not to let himself hope as a com-link molded and settled inside; a crisp, familiar voice broke through the white noise.

 _“Boss?”_ asked Friday, and his heart stopped.

“Friday,” his voice trembled.

_“Boss, I can’t find you.”_

He focused on his breathing. In and out, slow and steady. His sanity was about as stable as a first-grader’s science project: chemically unsound, misshapen, and held together by duct tape and their parent’s tears. He was one bad moment away from breaking.

“I must be in the atmosphere. I think. I hope.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, tucking his chin into his chest as he tracked his pulse with the other hand. “Quill?”

 _“Comin’ in hot!”_ the ship called back.

 _“You have eighty-seven missed calls from Secretary Ross and one hundred and twenty-nine text messages,”_ she reported, managing to sound uneasy.

“Don’t care.”

_“Three calls are from blocked numbers. One sent a text. ‘Code Red.’”_

Tony shook his head.

“Don’t care.” He frowned, recognizing his own lie. “Friday, don’t make me ask.”

 _“Sorry, boss.”_ If an AI could worry about something, now was the time she’d be doing it. But before Tony could even consider how an AI would worry (or what the implications of that were), Friday was already rattling off more reports. The nanotech housing projected them in holographic form: news reports, trending feeds, live video and broadcasts. Cities all over the world falling into chaos. People disappearing out of cars, causing pileups; public transportation in shambles, from planes to trains to automobiles; politicians and heads of state reported missing; desperately overcrowded hospitals issuing pleas for donations and assistance. There were too many holes in too many places. Too many questions of _where are the Avengers?_ and _What happened to Tony Stark?_

“Can you launch the Legion? Launch the Legion.” He decided, pushing Quill’s gun away with his foot. He huddled further beneath his blankets, leaning heavily against the wall. “Global scale. Whatever we got. Start ‘em on search and rescue. Prioritize cities by population size.”

_“We don’t have Accord authorization.”_

“Don’t talk back to me.”

_“Done.”_

He sighed, flicking through different videos. “Might as well get a House Party started, too. I want boots on the ground.” He waved the hologram away, closing his eyes. “Are the internal networks still online?”

_“Yep.”_

“All right, we’re going to force-push notifications to every product we got. Phones, computers, televisions. Toasters, for God’s sake. If it’s got a screen, it’s getting a notification.”

_“Awaiting prompt.”_

“Standard emergency message 18,” he recited, pulling at a thin memory. “and critical emergency message 1, then standard emergency message 12. Swap Cap’s name for mine, I’ll do a digital briefing tonight. If we don’t crash land.”

 _“Awaiting authorization.”_ Nano-bots crawled out from his chest, rearing up and back like a snake to beam a retina scanner in his eye. They shrunk back a second later. _“Authorization granted. Forcing notifications now.”_

Settling back against the cool metal wall, Tony took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He could feel his heart rate increasing as the seconds ticked by. Home was just a couple hours away, though, and maybe it’d just be one big panic attack when he got there, but that was better than this. Better than being alone, trapped in a dead man’s spaceship, trying not to go insane. Trying not to think about how he was outnumbered one to three hundred with dead bodies.

He knew there was one thing that could make it all better. One thing that could calm him down and smooth him out.

“Where’s Pepper?” Blood rushed in his ears. Pulling his blankets tighter around himself, he asked again, “Friday, where’s Pepper?”

When she didn’t answer immediately, her silence had already gone on too long.

_“She went off the grid shortly after you did, Boss.”_

He sucked in a breath, shuddered, and felt everything start to crumble around him.

_"I’ll keep trying her.”_

“Uh-huh.”

Hands shaking, pulse racing, and head pounding, Tony clung to the desperate hope that maybe, in all the chaos, she’d simply gotten lost. Her phone was dead, the car had broken down. Maybe she was helping people. She couldn’t be dust. Not her. Not her, not her, _not her._

“Friday?” Tony gasped her name, forcing air into his lungs.

_"Yes, Boss?”_

“Call Steve Rogers.”

Everything went a little grey, a little numb, and time sped up like a blackout during a binge.

* * *

_“Hello?”_

Steve Rogers’ voice, through a wave of static, felt like a knife in the back and a medic’s arrival all at once.

“Hey, Capsicle.”

A pause. Long enough to be painful, to twist the knife an inch closer to his heart. But then—

_"Tony?!”_

Rhodey’s voice was like ice water on a cold day. Like an ice pack for a hangover. Tears stung the corners of his eyes as he swallowed down a sob, laughing instead to cover up the pain.

“Googly-bear? What are you—” Reality caught up with him. “Why are you with Steve?”

_"Long story. I think I’m in the fun-vee this time now, buddy.”_

What he wouldn’t give for another stint in Afghanistan. Another arc reactor, another start, if only to make sure that he never made it out of the caves. To make sure this could never happen.

“Don’t know about that. Who else is there?”

_"Hey, Tony.”_

Natasha. Of course. She was too stubborn to die.

_"Man of Iron. I’m glad to hear you.”_

Thor. Oh, thank the one-eyed kings of Asgard, Thor was still alive.

Then, silence. Empty, endless silence. Bruce, Clint, Vision, Wanda, Sam – even god damn Bucky Barnes – where were they?

“That’s it?”

Harsh static cut through the call, overwhelming everything for a terrifying second.

 _"Tony? Where are you, Tony? Can you hear me?”_ Steve called.

He swallowed passed a lump in his throat. “Somewhere in the mesosphere, I think. Coming in fast.”

_"Where?”_

_"The atmosphere,”_ Natasha explained, though not because Steve really needed it. _"Tony, you’re in space?”_

“Long story, Miss Rushman. Tell you all about it over a drink.”

_"Uh-huh.”_

“Where are you? New York?” He thought of them in HQ, all huddled together. Covered in dust, spattered in blood. Hurting, like him, but at least they were together.

_"Wakanda.”_

Well, damn. “No shit? Tell me there’s a talking racoon somewhere.”

 _"I think he’s a rabbit,”_ Thor added helpfully. _"He’s here. Somewhere. Do you possess his ship?”_

“Think so.” More static, then, somewhat shakily, Tony asked, “Rhodey?”

_"Yeah?”_

“…Pepper won’t—won’t answer.” Static crackled louder. Grasping at the straws of his sanity, Tony tried again, praying the call would hold. “Pepper won’t answer her phone.”

_"…no, Tony… I…”_

The connection cut out.

* * *

Between the phone call and Wakanda, he didn’t remember much of anything. It was like he’d gone on autopilot, his shock finally crawling out of the back seat to take the wheel. Later, when he thought back on it, he’d realize it was probably the only thing that kept the panic attack at bay.

Semi-consciousness crept up on him a couple thousand feet above ground, when Holo-Quill broke the armory seal and the frigid, chilled air from the rest of the spaceship hit him in a cold front.

_"You’re almost home, man. Come buckle up for landing.”_

Tony blinked and found himself in cockpit, unable to remember how he’d gotten there. The next second he was trying to secure the harness across his chest, hands numb and shaking. The visualizer had turned back on at some point; Holo-Quill was watching him with concern, moving to put a hand on his shoulder. It flickered over his skin, barely a brush of static electricity over fabric.

_"Hold on.”_

A landing happened somewhere between sitting down and standing back up. His side ached with a dull, infectious pain. Distantly, he hoped someone had sent the medics out to meet him. Here, on the outside of Wakanda’s borders, he wondered if Steve Rogers would bother to come meet him.

 _"You did good, dude.”_ Holo-Quill was standing next to him, flickering a little. _"Take care of yourself.”_

“Sure,” Tony murmured, glancing down at the floor as the airlocks hissed. Pneumatics bled with bursts of cold air. The shine of something gold caught his eye.

 _Loki,_ he thought, and then, _Pepper._

Pepper not answering her phone when he’d flown into a portal. Pepper not answering now, when a _snap_ had destroyed half the universe.

Absently, he picked the helmet up by a horn, looking it over.

 _"He’s my brother,”_ Thor had said, over and over and over. _"He’s my brother. For all his faults, he’ll always be my brother.”_

Light flooded into the ship and Tony blinked in protest, closing his eyes and shielding himself with his arm. It didn’t take long to become accustomed to the cold dark of outer space. Now, warmth and light spilled over him, smothering him with the distinct feeling of home.

He was outside himself when his feet carried him down the ramp. When he pulled the blankets shut for comfort, hiding Loki’s helmet in the folds. The _Bataran_ had landed in a wide clearing, just outside the visible force field that shielded Wakanda. Dirt crunched beneath his feet as tall, thin grass brushed his calves. The dry heat crawled up into his bones, oxygen-rich air catching on his throat in earthy tones. A hot breeze rattled the shade cast by tall, gnarled trees. This was home – not his home, but Earth, and that was good enough.

Figures approached, blurred by African sunlight. A woman and others on her flank, following in formation; a line of red and orange soldiers, matched with others in blue and black behind them. A painfully reflective hunk of metal was farther back, which had to be some sort of hovercraft. Tony blinked harder, but it didn’t help much.

“Pepper?” he heard himself say.

Natasha touched his cheek and he spun back into himself. She was staring as he shuddered back into consciousness, her hand soft and warm against his chilled skin.

“No, Tony. It’s me. Are you all right?” she asked, and he realized that the blonde hair wasn’t a trick of the light. He stared at it, transfixed, before he looked back at her and tried to answer.

 _Always,_ he meant to say, but instead—

“No.”

The world felt like it was crumbling. He swayed dangerously but hit something hard when his knees gave out.

“Tony, hey, Tony, _Tony,_ woah—”

He blinked up at Rhodey, wrapped up in War Machine, and realized he’d stumbled back into the suit. His best friend had him by the shoulders, supporting him against his plated chest. Something small ran past their ankles in a blur of black and brown, but Tony barely noticed.

“Rhodey.” A million things bubbled up, brimmed over, and spilled out. He twisted, pulling back to face him. “Pepper, Pepper, Pepper—won’t answer, God, Rhodey, she won’t answer—” Inside his bundle of blankets, now sweltering instead of comforting, he gripped tightly to the horn of Loki’s helmet. His knuckles went white. “Tell me she’s okay, okay, Rhodey, you’ve got to—”

“Tony, slow down.”

He lurched forward, then swayed dangerously to the side. One horn scraped against the nanotech housing, rattling the memory of a spear and the Tower through his ribcage. The arc reactor. _They’ll be too busy fighting you._ Of Asgard, of the Asgardians— Loki—

“Thor, I need Thor.” He stumbled again, but two strong, firm hands found his shoulders before he could tumble over.

“Stark.” Said an even, soothing voice. “I’m here.”

The stuttering, disorienting flow of time pulled to an abrupt halt. Tony stewed in his shock. Faced with a stranger – a massive, overwhelming man, who spoke in a familiar bass with a heavy accent – he could only blink, wanting to shake him off but thinking better of it. There was something too familiar about him. The smell of a thunderstorm, the spark of electricity on his skin.

“Thor?” he wondered, and the Avenger’s strangest member squeezed his shoulders in comfort.

“Aye?”

His hair was shorter. His eyes were mismatched, one blue and the other brown, the latter raked with scars from eyebrow to cheekbone. It made him want to ask _why_ and _what happened,_ but the memory of three hundred Asgardians sobered him. Three hundred corpses floating in the dark, in the cold, with only scattered starlight to look on their graves. Loki’s helmet, still held tight in his hand. That was what happened.

 _How?_ Tony thought wildly. How was this man still standing? How was he smiling?

A lump in his throat kept these thoughts inside. A million half-baked apologies bubbled up to his tongue and fizzled out, each feeling more disingenuous than the last. How did you tell your friend that everyone he loved was dead?

A bitter memory rose out of its grave, clawing at the inside of his skull.

 _"Tony.”_ Almost thirty years ago, Obadiah Stane came up to Tony’s doorstep and knocked. Fifty reporters drowned them in an onslaught of flashing light, each person shouting so loud that it drowned out the questions they wanted to ask. They were vultures preying on the weak. On the dying. On the dead. _"I’m so sorry.”_ His parents were dead. (His parents were murdered.)

“I…” Helplessly, he glanced over his shoulder towards the ship. There was no making this easier. No good way to say it. “…I’m so sorry.”

Gold glinted in the sunlight as the blanket slipped off his shoulders. Loki’s helmet gleamed when he held it out between them, beautiful and deadly; as Thor looked upon the last memento of his little brother, his expression smoothed up and out in surprise. Tony couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye.

“I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What I listened to while writing this chapter: ["Hunger of the Pines" by alt-j.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCCXq9QB-dQ)  
> Buy me a [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/severawrites)!
> 
> Leave me a review and let me know what you think! I do my best to respond to questions. I can't wait to move away from italicized dialogue...


	3. The Sokovia Accords; Re: God of Thunder

**WAKANDA — ONE HOUR BEFORE TONY STARK'S RETURN**

Steve was ready to punch something.

But all he could do was grind his hands into fists, seething, because punching a hole in Wakanda’s throne room wasn’t right, no matter how good it’d feel. His mother had raised him better than that, he reminded himself, but then he thought about how Bucky would laugh if he’d done it anyway - punched a hole in a wall, tipped over his chair, picked Ross up by the neck and tossed him out the window…

_Ya’ got big, sure, but you ain’t any smarter for it, Rogers._

Carefully unclenching his fists, he spent his energy tapping his heels instead, hunched forward with his elbows on his restless legs and his hands between them. The hologram of Ross kept pacing in front of them, surrounded by a royal delegation of chairs; Queen-Mother Ramonda and her throne on his right, Natasha perched on the low back of the chair to his left. If Ross riled her, it didn’t show – she stayed engrossed in her phone, perpetually connected to whatever outside world was left. Steve knew better than to interrupt her.

Colonel Rhodes was directly across from them, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned heavily into his chair. He wasn’t saying much, too busy watching this train wreck unfold - and God was it a wreck. A derailed, disjointed, teetering mess clinging to the side of a mountain. This last week aside, there was still everything that had happened before: Germany. The airport. Rhodey's god damn spine. Steve couldn’t help but wonder what was on his mind; how he’d been so easy-going accepting them back into the fold. Maybe that was the worst part: how easy it had been to slide back into his role of Avenger, of Captain America, when he didn't deserve even the smallest bit of forgiveness from anyone on the other side of the line.

“…It is the stance of the United Nations—”

Rhodey somehow found a way to lean back further in his chair, shaking his head and grinding his teeth.  

“This is not the United Nations, Secretary,” Queen Ramonda interrupted for him, a somewhat neutral player on the field, “This is Wakanda.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, your Majesty,” Ross’ hologram gestured widely to unseen things, clearly aggravated. He looked wild, comb-over flipped to the wrong side and eyes bloodshot. His tie had been pulled loose, his jacket discarded somewhere so they could see his sleeves shoved messily up to his elbows. “Half the world disappeared outside your force field.”

Her finely manicured fingers tensed against her armrest. “And within it.”

“Then you’ll agree that the people – _your_ people, " he added hastily, " -have a right to an explanation from their so-called _superheroes._ People need to be held accountable—”

Expression twisting with disgust, Steve leaned back in his chair again, rolling in that that word: _superhero_. These were the people that had made him - that had made _them_ , treating them like trash. Like tools. Like weapons. Telling them they were too reckless, too volatile, too uncontrollable, even though the world wouldn’t exist without them. Hell, half of Europe wouldn’t even be around to hate them if he hadn't gone down with the _Valkyrie_ in the Atlantic.

“Are you suggesting that this is our fault, Secretary?” Natasha asked. She barely looked up from her phone, thumbs tapping away across the screen.

“Miss Romanov, you and your people—”

“Here we go,” Rhodey groaned. The Queen shifted back in her throne, tilting her head into her hand with a long suffering sigh.

“Our people?” Steve demanded.

“Your _enhanced_ peoples,” Ross said sharply, spinning on his heel. “Acted unsupervised in direct alliance with a sovereign nation – whose objectives the world still holds very much in question.”

“Objectives?” Queen Ramonda asked, suddenly poised once again. “What we have done today is more than enough to speak to our _objectives._ ”

“And what about what you haven’t done?!” he snapped, rounding on her with an accusatory finger. Steve’s foot jumped. “Sokovia? Ultron? Loki in New York? You never lifted a finger—”

“I think we handled that pretty well on our own,” he pointed out, standing up. “Wakanda didn’t have to fight today, but they did, and instead of having to wait around for orders you might _never give,_ we—”

He could’ve gone on forever. Could’ve ground Ross into tiny little ashes like everyone else, dug into him and torn him apart at the joints, but he didn’t, because he never got the chance to.

“Who speaks ill of my brother?”

_Crap._

Thor, standing in the massive doorway of the throne room, leaned against the frame and crossed his arms, waiting for an answer.

 _I told you to wait,_ was Steve’s first thought, and then, _why didn’t you just wait, god dammit,_ but it was too late. Dread pitted his stomach, clenching every muscle around it, and he stewed in the awful feeling of being found out. There was one of their so-called nuclear warheads, returned to Earth.

“You,” Ross gasped.

“Me,” he acknowledged. His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thor,” Steve said numbly, warily. Natasha glanced up from her phone, giving Thor a half-wave. He returned it with a nod.

At least Bruce had been smart enough to hang back in Shuri’s lab.

“Thor. Welcome to Wakanda.” Queen Ramonda said smoothly, politely derailing the silence.

“Your Majesty,” he nodded his head awkwardly, but it was charming enough to be polite.

With that, he pushed off the frame and stepped down the short stairs, into center field with the rest of them. Steve slowly lowered himself back into his seat, reeling in strategic recovery. What would Ross do? What would Thor do?

“Hey, man,” Rhodey greeted. Thor clasped him on the shoulder, bumping his fist when it was offered out. Natasha shook her head, returning to her phone. “Nice haircut.”

“Thank you. Has anyone seen the rabbit?”

 _Christ._ Steve shook his head, palms pressed flat on his thighs in preparation for impact. Not having to explain a talking, trigger-happy rabbit to the Secretary of State would be great, really, and if Thor could just keep his big thundering mouth shut...

“Uh. I'm Thaddeus Ross,” Ross introduced himself, awkwardly ignoring the question. “Secretary of State. Wish I could say it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“I’m sure it’s my pleasure.” But it sounded like Thor thought otherwise.

Ross hesitated only a moment, then cleared his throat. “Yes. But. As I was saying…”

“As you were saying,” Ramonda allowed, “I believe you were levying unfounded accusations against my country.”

Thor settled in the chair next to Rhodey, across from Steve, leaning with an elbow tipped over the backrest, playing at casual. It was a good play, too – if they weren’t friends, he might’ve never noticed the storm brewing. Thor had always been attentive, more so than most people realized, but there was an edge to him now, like when a man went to war and came back less whole. Perhaps he had; his right eye was an unfamiliar brown, framed with the hints of a scar. Steve swallowed hard, forcing himself to watch Ross’ failing composure instead.

“Yes,” he conceded, beginning to pace the circle again. “The stance of the United Nations is that all enhanced peoples turn themselves in immediately. You’ll be organized and given assignments to help maintain order—”

“We can’t do that on our own?” Steve countered.

“What is he talking about?” Thor asked Rhodey. He whispered something in his ear in return, which furrowed his brow, morphing his calm into concern.

“—with the promise that any previous judgements or court marshals,” Ross continued, “will be pardoned.”

“It’s a witch hunt,” Natasha murmured.

“Witches?” Thor asked, sounding alarmed. Rhodey put a hand over his mouth to stifle his expression.

“They want to gather us all up in one place. Get control. Maintain it, if they’re lucky.”

“This is not a witch hunt, Agent Romanoff.”

“No, but it is the end of the world, Secretary.” She looked up from her phone, letting it rest idly in her lap. “What about making it right?”

There was a pause, a beat of expectant silence, and then:

“I’m afraid we may not be able to make this right, Agent Romanov,” Ramonda confessed.

“No. We have to try,” Steve shook his head stubbornly. “We’re here, together.”

“And Tony’s still out there,” Rhodey pointed out. “We’ve got to get him home.”

“Yes,” he agreed, absolute. “And he’s still out there.” Thanos, with his stones, with his infinite God complex. “We can do something, but it’s not going to be playing world police while—”

“You will do what you need to do, Captain!” Ross snapped. His pace grew more agitated, more panicked. “Look around you. This is all we have left. A super soldier, a spy, a Colonel with a broken spine in a robot suit, and _him,_ and we still don’t know why he’s here!”

Thor raised an eyebrow at the finger pointed at him, his hand twitching at his side.

“Thanos is your concern, not I.”

“I don’t care.” Ross rejected him fully, so much that he took a few steps back. “And this ‘Thanos,’” he mocked, shaking his head. “You want to cause widespread panic? Spinning stories about aliens and magic stones?”

“It’s already widespread panic.” Steve said, “They deserve to know the truth.”

“I still barely believe that bull. You expect anyone else to?”

“Anyone who doesn’t is a fool.” Thor bristled, a muscle in his jaw jumping.

“Enough,” the Queen shook her head, holding her hand up to silence the rabble. “The people of the world will believe Wakanda. We have no reason to lie and,” she added, “we have proof. You, however, have no right to hold these fine men and women accountable for anything but their heroism. We are in their debt.”

“No right to—?!” he blathered, taken aback. “I have every right to hold them accountable, _your Majesty_. They caused this.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, excuse _you_ .” Ross rounded his tirade on Thor, braver for being a hologram. “Ever since _you_ appeared, these things started happening, and all of you go on without having to answer to anyone, doing anything, and—”

“Tread carefully.”

“—when the dust settles, when you drop a city and then _go home_ ,” the room flinched, but he barreled on, “the rest of the world has to play clean up. So it’s your turn now. There’s no fixing it. No smiling for the cameras. No paying cities off. The people—”

“You dare. My people—”

“You are a foreign, alien body – a royal one,” Ross added hastily, unkindly, “doing whatever you want, wherever you want, without oversight. You and _your_ _people_ leveled an entire town. Then New York. Your stunt in London—”

The way Thor’s shoulders tensed struck a nerve in Steve.

“I offered my loyalty to Nick Fury.” A string of lightning danced across his chest, crackling through the air and crawling over his hand. Static bristled the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck and he prepared himself for the fallout. Rhodes stood up. “To you, I will not.”

“Then you’ll be the same as them,” he said, gesturing to the remaining Avengers, “You’ll be subject to—”

“I am Thor, of Asgard, and I am subject to none.” The hologram projection flickered, electronics throughout the room beginning to misbehave. “I’ve lost everything, yet I come here to protect you. To avenge. I see only one problem here, and– ”

Then, with jarring volume, a phone rang. Steve jolted and Ross froze, unable to look away from the God he’d riled up. No one else moved, but Natasha's nails still tapped across her phone; it remained steady in her hands as another ring sounded off, clearly not her own. Steve glanced to Rhodey, but realized he didn’t have a phone when he was in the suit — he didn’t need one. And Thor had given up on them once he’d fried three custom Starkphones. So that left…

_Tony._

Fumbling like it was 1941 and someone had thrown his skinny ass a football, Steve struggled with his pocket and the small, outdated cell shoved inside. After three short rings he managed to wrangle it out, fingers shaking when he flipped it open.

_Unknown Number._

All eyes on him, he thumbed the answer button and then the speaker; the plastic frame cracked under unintended force. Only one person had this number. Only one.

“Hello?”

His heart was running laps in his chest. Silence filled the line, interrupted by the crackle of what sounded like a sigh; someone cleared their throat on the other side.

_“Hey, Capsicle.”_

Rhodey’s eyes went as wide as disks. Ramonda waved her hand and Ross promptly disappeared, his last moments spent looking like an air-drowned fish.

“Tony?!”

_“Googly-bear?”_

Steve’s heart sank to his stomach. Not because Tony was quick to take to Rhodey – he didn’t mind, really, being pushed aside, because if their roles were switched, if Tony was holding this phone and he was on the other side, listening to Bucky chime in, he’d probably do the same thing. His heart ached because he knew that tone – that desperate, numb warmth that bled into people’s voices when they were trying to make it seem like they were all right. He’d heard it a thousand times on a hundred battle fronts. From Bucky after he’d rescued him from a slab in a Hydra testing facility, who’d looked up at him and pretended that everything would be ok.

_“What are you – why are you with Steve?”_

“Long story. I think I’m in the fun-vee this time now, buddy.”

_“Don’t know about that. Who else is there?”_

If it were possible for his heart to sink lower, it did right then.

“Hey, Tony.” Natasha answered.

“Man of Iron,” Thor put in, visibly calming down. He rolled his shoulders back, shaking off the thought of Ross. “I’m glad to hear you.”

Tony hesitated, hanging an awkward silence in the air. Steve swallowed. When he finally responded, it took a super soldier’s hearing to understand.

_“That’s it?”_

He set the comment aside. It didn’t matter, he told himself. What mattered was that Tony was alive.

“Tony? Where are you, Tony?” Harsh static cut through the call, overwhelming them both for a couple of seconds. “Can you hear me?”

_“Somewhere in the mesosphere, I think. Coming in fast.”_

“Where?”

“The atmosphere,” Natasha said dismissively, leaning over. “Tony, you’re in space?”

_“Long story, Miss Rushman. Tell you all about it over a drink.”_

“Uh-huh.”

In the atmosphere. In _space._ While aliens had been attacking Earth, Earth’s best defender had been off-planet. Doing what? What could possibly be more important than them? Than Vision?

_“Where are you? New York?”_

“Wakanda.” Steve answered numbly. He couldn’t bring himself to ask why.

_“No shit? Tell me there’s a talking racoon somewhere.”_

“I think he’s a rabbit,” Thor corrected incorrectly. “He’s here somewhere. Do you possess his ship?”

 _“Think so.”_ More static, then, shakily, Tony asked, _“Rhodey?”_

“Yeah?”

 _“…Pepper won’t—won’t answer.”_ Static crackled louder. Tony clearly tried again. “ _Pepper won’t answer her phone.”_

“What? No, Tony, I thought she was with you.”

The call cut out abruptly, leaving Rhodey to curse. He was ashen.

“I think,” he started, “I’ll think I’ll—”

“Go,” Steve told him, even though he really wasn’t in any place to give Rhodey permission. “We’ll go find him. Nat—”

She was already up and moving, phone finally put away. “I’ll make sure they know he’s a friendly,” she promised, and then Rhodes was on her heels.

“I’m with you,” he said.

“As am I.” But Thor paused in the doorway when he saw Steve hesitating, head bowed, still seated. The Queen was already leaving, commanding her guard to follow their lead, but he remained, staring at the cracked phone in his hand. “Steve?”

Tony was alive.

It played on loop in his mind - the cold cement, the shield, the blood and a busted arc reactor. Siberia. Bucky’s blasted-off arm. The video of a car crash and Howard Stark dying, Tony’s mother crying.

It was the last time they’d seen each other.

_“That shield doesn’t belong to you.”_

“Steve,” Thor said again. He blinked, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Bruce,” he decided. It was an excuse – a shitty, shity excuse – but Tony wouldn’t want him there. Couldn’t possibly want Captain America anywhere near him. Wouldn’t want that reminder, that memory of Avengers breaking apart, even if Bucky was ash and gone. “I’ll go… go tell Bruce.”

“I—”

“I’ve got it,” Steve said assuredly, standing up and already heading towards the door (towards his escape). “Really, go. It’ll be fine. Tony needs you.”

Thor didn’t believe him – there wasn’t getting much past the brother of the God of Lies, after all – but it wasn’t like he could look him in the eye anyway.

It was probably for the best, he told himself.

It had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really struggled with this chapter and almost deleted it from the story entirely. What do you think? I'm really interested to hear your feedback!


	4. Put to Rest

Tony Stark arrived on Midgard with all the composure of a drowning man pulled from sea.

“Thor. I need Thor.”

Thor steadied him as best he could, catching him by the shoulders. He stood firmly rooted to Midgard’s soil, anchored there, as if half the universe hadn’t crumbled away.

“Stark,” Unwavering and strong, thinking himself capable of tempering this storm, he tried to soothe the madness out of his expression. “I’m here.”

Tony vibrated with nervous energy. Thor had seen him taken by his madnesses before, after endless nights toiling in his craft, or sometimes simply when he thought no one was looking - when the exhaustion cracked through his composure, beating around him as if he were battered by an eddy, be it on the battlefield or in rest. Ultron had been the worst product of it, perhaps, his promise for a better, safer world gone wrong. But these bouts of madness would pass. The tide would calm. Tony would grapple his way back from the dark with little more than his wits and stubbornness for weapons. 

This time, however, it seemed he was still consumed by it.

“Thor?”

“Aye.”

The situation was dire, that no one doubted, but Thor already worried for their state. What had become of his comrades? What was the cause of Steve's weariness, and why was the Widow's expression drawn with such thin lines? What would they become if he were not there to steady him? Unconsciously, he held the Man of Iron a little bit tighter, wondering if this might be the final straw that broke him. Wondering how he might stave off their madness a little while longer.

But then—

“Thor… I’m so, so sorry.”

Gold gleamed between them. His eyes fell on a signature piece of Asgard, outstretched in a trembling hand, Stark's knuckles white around a familiar curve of gold.

_Loki._

False promises and betrayals lingered on the mind. Memories of a terrible morning just barely past crawled out of the dark, clawing up his chest, bringing bile and sickness in their wake until everything threatening to culminate, to spill, while an ache in his heart pounded loud against his sternum and —

_Brother._

Forcing his hands to steady, Thor tried not to falter. He didn’t hear Tony’s apology, lost underneath the crumbling sound of his own chest caving in; that swift, dizzying pulse of his heart slowing to a crawl before it stopped, only to beat again in break-neck speed. _How?_

“Stark?”

Grief bobbed in his throat, lodged firmly alongside anguish, and threatened to suffocate him. He would’ve choked on it if not for the memory of Loki doing the same; if not for the memory of a different, gut-wrenching _snap_ that cracked the life out of his baby brother.

“…I-I found it,” Tony managed, blinking wildly. His entire body buzzed with anxiety. “On the way here. Found that, found…” A pause. An errant, nervous look over his shoulder, back towards the ship he’d arrived in.

Tony teetered dangerously. Distracted by his memories, Thor almost let him fall, but managed to catch him against his chest, fumbling the reception. It put them in an awkward embrace, his free arm pinned between them so that his hand splayed over a metal heart. He couldn’t recall a time where’d he’d ever seen the Man of Iron so shaken.

Rhodes hurried to help, hand on the back of Tony’s shoulder.

“Found ‘em all.” Tony didn’t try to move. In fact, he collapsed completely into Thor, unable to support his own weight. “I thought—”

The world was a blur of light and emotion. Thor blinked his way through it, palming Stark upright as Rhodes pried him up by the shoulders.

“Them all?” he repeated, trying the words for himself.

“Them.” Tony whispered. “Him.”

The way Tony jolted under his hand, Thor realized he’d started, pressing too harshly against the metal in his chest. But before he could temper himself or apologize, Tony kept rattling on.

“Thought it was better than dust. Their-their bodies. Thought you might, you could… I couldn’t just… just leave them out there. Y’know—”

“Stark,” Thor said strongly, startling himself with the sound of his own voice. Everyone had fallen silent – that one word, _dust,_ floating through the air like a wraith, cursed and unwanted – but Tony, brittle as he was, was too far gone to notice. He jolted, jostled out of his ramblings.

“I—”

“Stark, _breathe_.”

* * *

_A thousand lifetimes ago – one week past Ragnarok, with months left until they reached Midgard, until Thanos would lay siege upon them – the Hulk had taken Loki by the ankle and thrown him like a ragdoll out the door._

_“Hulk!”_

_“Puny God!” roared the Hulk, bodily blocking the entryway. Thor tried to shoulder past him, but just managed to ram himself repeatedly into one impressively solid buttcheek. “Hurt Earth! Steal box!” He pointed at the crumpled body of Loki, cratered in the wall across the hall. “No trust.”_

_“Move, you big green bastard!” With a final, massive push, coupled with a sharp static shock to the ass, Thor managed to stumble through the door. Hulk’s whine fell on deaf ears as the Valkyrie arrived in the hall, staring down at Loki with all the concern a bilgensnipe had for a snake. She shrugged, toeing his ribs curiously._

_“Is he dead?”_

_Loki hissed, prying his face away from metal to glare up at her._

_“It’s not like Lackey doesn’t deserve it, y’know,” she adjusted the six pack of cans underneath her arm, pilfered from the Grandmaster’s stocks. Water was severely lacking on the refugee ship. The same could not be said for alcohol._

_“Your concern is touching, Scrapper 4-9-2.” Pushing himself out of his crater, Loki spat blood. Thor heaved him up by the shoulder, perhaps too hastily, trying to steady his brother as he swayed heavily into his chest. Cold air leaked out of a broken pipe behind them, metal creaking in relief._

_“Fighting each other won’t help anything.”_

_“I’m loathe to say I agree with you, brother.”_

_“Shut up.”_

_“Hulk smash bad guys. Hulk smash Loki.”_

_The Valkyrie rolled her eyes. “Anyone care to fill me in?”_

_Hulk grunted, turning and lifting one large finger towards the table within the conference room. There Heimdall leaned back in a chair, unbothered by the violent outburst, busied with a peculiar, glowing cube. Its blue light cast gentle shadows over his face, reflecting strangely against his golden eyes._

_“Puny God use box to hurt Earth. Aliens.” He made a large gesture with his hands overhead, fingers wagging as his palms soared in simulation of flight. “Bring flying whale-beasts, little aliens, smash buildings.” He mimicked the sound of explosions, sloppily miming the destruction of a city. “Almost kill friends. Iron Man go portal, almost not come back. Hulk smash Puny God. Hulk help.”_

_“It’s called the Tesseract,” Heimdall offered. Loki and Thor pushed between Valkyrie and Hulk, earning and angry grumble from the largest offender. Thor glared up in warning. “Odin had it safely away in the Vault.”_

_“I had it safely away in a vault,” Loki corrected. “And if I’d left it there, it would’ve been ripe for picking. The Eternal Flame would’ve done nothing to it.” Carefully, Thor eased Loki into a chair. He hissed in pain, gently pressing a hand against his chest._

_“No—” When Hulk lumbered towards forward, clearly still angry, Thor stood between them. Patience had never been his virtue. “Hulk, if you try and smash my brother, by the Norns, I’ll smash you.”_

_“Brother lie! Use box again! Hurt Hulk, hurt you.”_

_“I won’t hurt you, you idiot.” Loki groaned, muttering his thanks as Valkyrie dropped a can of unidentifiable booze in front of him. It fizzed when he popped the cap. “If I’d wanted you dead, I would’ve done it already.”_

_“Hulk not idiot! You idiot. Smash idiot.”_

_“Loki, stop! Hulk, back off.”_

_“Stop arguing, all three of you.” The Valkyrie insisted, spinning a chair one one leg to sit backwards in it, leaning her chest against the backrest. “So we’ve got a glowy blue box, so what?”_

_“It’s kin to the Aether, that’s what.” Heimdall muttered, setting the Tesseract down._

_Every piece of her easy-going nature fluttered away in an instant. “What?”_

_“An infinity stone. And if I could kindly have a moment without smashing…” Loki tried, sharply pulling his hands away and up from the Tesseract when the Hulk stomped his foot, shaking the table. “…I’ve a story to share.”_

* * *

Those who had greeted Iron Man's return to Midgard left with great haste, gathering the last of Earth's mightiest and rushing him away, back to Wakanda and its great, hidden city, where he might find a moment of respite in the hell that the universe had become.

Thor was not among them.

He stepped quickly up the ramp of the _Bataran_ once they were gone, merely specs of glinting hovercraft in the distance. Perhaps it had been unkind of him to leave Tony as he had, but there were others more suited to be his caretaker: Rhodes and Natasha, for instance, who were far more capable; who'd seen him through other tragedies. And there was Steve, surely, though there was tension there that had yet to be explained. At the very least, Tony would be seen for his wounds and treated with care. So if Asgard was here – no, if _Loki_ was here, as his horns said he might be, Thor's priorities weren't with his friends. His brother came first. Always.

The cold of the ship hit him first. Second, its cargo.

Everything went still.

At the sight of Asgard, cold and lifeless, spread across the floor, the world slowed to a halt. At the sight of _him_ , laid at his feet, Thor locked his knees so he wouldn’t sway – and quickly failed in that, catching himself on wall and leaning heavily against the cold metal.

_Heimdall._

His body lay separate from all others, as if dropped or forgotten, with the Bifrost Sword discarded carelessly beside him. Thor slid to his knees without thinking, reaching out for his friend. His breath fogged the chill air.

“Heimdall?”

His skin was ice beneath his hand. His gaze, once twinkling with the lives of a thousand realms, reflected nothing but the lights above them.

“Oh, Heimdall.”

On the _Statesman,_ Thor’s grief had been born. There he’d thought it died, too, when he’d woken from its wreckage on the _Bataran_ , hollowed out and stripped of his grief. After losing everything, he felt almost nothing, given only rage and numbness with which to continue. With that he’d forged Stormbreaker, wielding a recklessness that bordered on suicidal. With his rage he’d razed the battlefields of Wakanda.

He was not afforded those kindnesses now.

Tears pricking the corners of his vision, Thor gently closed the eyes of Heimdall, All Seer, and collapsed sideways into the wall. Loki’s helmet trembled lightly in his hand. He remembered a bridge. (He remembered his grief.)

_Dangling from the Bifrost, Loki looked up. Past his brother and to their Father, but Thor saw the change before it happened. Saw the rage, the madness, the anger. The devastation – the raw desperation. His hand twitching on Gungnir, hinting at hopelessness._

When Loki let go and fell into the Void of the Bifrost, there’d been no body to mourn. There’d been hope that, somehow, he might’ve survived. (And he did. Thank the Norns, he did.)

_Trembling, shaking, and bleeding red-blue onto black sand, Loki shuddered in Thor’s arms and found a slice of redemption. “I didn’t do it for him.”_

On Svartalfheim, there’d been a body. At first. After Thor had made his peace with Asgard, he’d gone searching for it, meaning to return Loki home and give his brother a burial of Kings. More than a few whispered apologies and a cut lock of hair. But there’d been nothing to return. Just a smear of black around beastly footprints, cutting Thor deeper than any of his brother’s knives. (Another trick, another death without a body to mourn.)

_Thanos lifted Loki high and Thor meant to break every beam on the ship, every strap of metal holding him down, but nothing yielded to his strength. “You’ll never be a God,” Loki choked, and Thor felt something snap within him the same moment something broke within his brother._

In all of Loki’s deaths, there’d never been a body.

Thor swallowed hard, wiping away the wetness on his cheeks.

There might be a body this time.

A small, quiet sound broke the silence. Thor started, eyes flying open as he scrambled. The Bifrost sword was already in hand by the time he was up to his knees, a sharp pang of fear quickening his heart before he realized he’d never been alone. Rocket was kneeling among the bodies of Asgard, his face buried in his tiny, clawed hands as he sobbed.

The Lord of Stars flickered in holographic form in front of him, smiling.

 _“Gotcha,”_ it said, somewhat cruelly, but the projection was kind enough to sound sad. Blue pixel lines cracked across its face, stuttering before everything righted. It flickered to kneel. _“Sorry. It was Babysitter protocol, man. Nebula turned it on.”_ As a whole, the projection shuddered, then remade itself in the image of the small girl with antenna, before warping again into the blue-green, tattooed giant man who’d seemed greatly impressed. He blinked and shifted one more time. The daughter of Thanos settled in front of Rocket.

 _“They disappeared,”_ said the green-skinned woman. Thor wished he remembered her name. _“Mantis. Drax. Quill. Groot. Me— Gamora—I, I—”_ Gamora blinked once, her gaze momentarily empty before she reported. Processes flickered in her pixel gaze. _“…I’m dead. Gamora is dead. That’s the only thing I can confirm.”_

Thor swallowed past a lump in his throat, turning his gaze to the ground as not to intrude. Rocket’s friends must’ve also been reduced to ash. Thanos’ reach was infinite.

As his new friend sobbed – the image of Gamora reached out to touch him, to comfort him, but her hand only hovered over his head – Thor closed his eyes. There was no way to fix the loss of everything. The evidence of that was here, all around him, with the corpses of Asgard resting in the hollowed version of Rocket’s life. The people who’d pulled him from the wreckage of his doom were gone, though he’d just met them this morning. Everything had changed. Everything was lost.

“Oh, _God_.”

Thor stiffened, the tip of Heimdall’s sword scraping against metal at the sound of another voice behind him. Rocket gasped at being discovered, but by the time Thor thought to speak, he’d already scampered off.

Bruce lingered in the entryway, surveying the massacre himself. (The Hulk within pushed forward in anger and then pulled back in fear, smothering himself deeper in the darkness they shared.) Caution softened his steps as he moved towards him, his hand trying to find awkward support on his shoulder. Thor anchored himself in case the shock made Bruce faint.

“No…”

When he looked to see what Bruce had spotted (and for the next million years, he’d be wishing he hadn’t looked, wishing he’d done anything else), he’d already left his side, the faint feeling of his weight lifting off his shoulder. His friend and fellow Avenger, Revenger, and sometimes Just-Hulk, stepped between the stacks of Asgardian children, kneeling over a familiar stretch of pale skin.

“Loki?”

Thor’s heart stopped in his chest.

Loki didn’t move. His neck lay broken across a stretch of black fabric, head resting unnaturally against his shoulder, his eyes wide open to Thor. Staring at him— no, staring _through_ him, Loki didn’t dare say a word. He couldn’t.

* * *

_Loki refused to look at anyone. He stared only at the Tesseract, wrapped up in the pleasant hum of its power, and finally closed his mouth, fingers laced together on the table in front of him._

_He didn’t realize he was trembling until a massive, green hand landed on his shoulder, promptly startling the shake out of his bones._

_“Hulk,” Thor warned._

_“No,” said the Beast, and Loki squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the assault. His spine certainly couldn’t be wrenched any further out of alignment, he thought, though that was no consolation to the pain. “No. Not smash Puny God.”_

_“What?”_

_The word escaped Loki before he could reign it back in, and, realizing he’d already given himself away, he turned fully to face the Beast. Where he expected anger, he found it. But for once it was not directed at him._

_“Angry blue box make Puny God crazy. Bag of cats,” he decided, as if the phrase meant anything at all. “Big Monster bully. Hulk help. Smash him.” He punched his fist into his palm, smiling like a berserking warrior child. “Smash together?”_

_“Erm...” Loki wasn’t often rendered speechless. Yet this creature made him fumble with his words, uncertain and surprised._

_“Bor’s Blood,” the Valkyrie laughed into her drink. Heimdall chuckled, leaning back in his chair. “Big Guy’s making friends.”_

_The silence that followed lasted a moment too long. He faltered, trying to find the right things to say that wouldn’t get him smashed into the nearest wall. Hulk shifted uncomfortably, his mouth twisting into a frown._

_“Smash together?” He shook Loki with a bit of force, snapping him to attention. Thor was at a loss, brows high and mouth hanging open._

_“Yes! Yes, I—” Loki pulled away out of instinct, standing from his chair. “I mean to say...” What was it meant to say, exactly? He straightened, feeling uncomfortably small with the Hulk’s beady eyes staring him down. Perhaps this was the Beast’s idea of a joke. “Are you quite certain?”_

_With a frown and a huff, the creature nodded. His mop of black hair dusted across his eyebrows, drawn together in frustration._

_“Hulk no trick.” It said, then pointed harshly against Loki’s chest, strongly enough that it might’ve bruised a mortal man. “You trick. Thor boom.” He clapped his humongous hands together in what could only mean thunder. “Little Girl and Gold Eyes fight. Hulk smash. Revengers together beat big dumb Bully.”_

_If only it had been that easy._

* * *

In the end, Tony was right. Having bodies to bury was better than having dust to mourn.

But thanks would have to come later. He was long since disappeared back into Wakanda and Bruce had followed, gone with his request to Queen Shuri and Queen-Mother Ramonda. To honor the Asgardian dead was to burn them in the absence of boats and sea. For that, he needed the wood of their forests, and their blessing to perform a foreign set of rites on their land.

They gracefully allowed it.

Luckily, the Space Dog invaders had felled most of the trees for him.

Thor was short of options. Three hundred pyres was no small order. Lacking time and labor, he resolved to building only one; a massive pyre as long as it was wide, stacked a few heads taller than his own in tiered layers. But this, like every plan before it, proved more difficult that anticipated. One pyre turned into three; one day turned into four.

It was a small mercy that he didn’t have to do it alone.

Steve Rogers arrived early on the first morning. Speaking little, he worked until dusk to help him drag and stack logs, others drawn to their work by the midday hours. Grateful, if somewhat weary, Wakandan soldiers made a majority of their numbers, but their elite Dora-Milaje soon made an appearance, flanked by well-meaning mothers and children with food and water. Thor found himself unable to turn them away, even smiling at times; perhaps this was therapeutic for them, too, he realized. They had no bodies to mourn in their grief. This task, the making of a funeral, was what was right to do - what was needed after a massacre. It was cloure.

But at night, when the clouds rolled in and the sun set, they didn’t impose. Building a pyre was an act of kindness, but these bodies were not theirs; Thor moved the remains of Asgard alone, burdened by his survival, but welcoming the solitude. Even Steve left him be.

By the early hours of dawn, he set the first pyre alight with a stunning bolt of lightning.

It was only then that he allowed himself rest. Seated on a fallen log and cast in the long shadows of flame, Thor watched Asgard burn. Again. When their bodies turned to stardust, wisps of gold shining like Odin and Frigga had, his prayers went with them to Valhalla. The warm air from the fire carried them up and away, into the stars and galaxies that twinkled over Midgard.

When the sun rose proper, his work started again. Rocket Rabbit remained on his ship, unseen, and Thor didn’t dare disturb him.

For four days he toiled. With no sleep and little food or water, accompanied by the kindness of friends and strangers, Thor honored his fallen people the only way knew how. All was well.

Until it was time to honor those he missed most.

Two lonely, small pyres stood side by side in the blackened field, built for the last remaining bodies of Asgard. Heimdall had been difficult enough to approach, heavier to carry than others, but Thor had already laid him down in his final resting place. What remained – what he had already tried and failed to do – promised to be more painful than burning alive in a dying star.

“Thor?”

Someone settled into place beside him at the base of the ramp. He remembered how to breathe.

“Steve.” His voice felt heavy.

“Last one?”

It should’ve been easy. But his feet were as heavy as Mjolnir and he was unworthy, unmoveable. Unable to face reality. Afraid to say his last goodbye.

“Loki. His neck.” His voice wavered uneasily, stumbling through an explanation. His hands moved in the air like scales unbalanced, struggling to articulate his thoughts. “It… He’s not, I can’t—”

“Thor,” Steve said quietly, lightly touching his back. “Breathe.”

“…I can’t.”

* * *

_“Knowing what you do now,” Loki began, standing beside his brother as he watched the stars pass, “Are you sure it’s wise to go to Earth?”_

_“Why not? The people of Earth love me.”_

_“Let me rephrase. Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring me to Earth?”_

_“No.” Thor didn’t hesitate. Maybe he should’ve, but Loki wasn’t prone to weep over the opinions of Midgardians. “But everything will be fine, brother. What worse could happen now?”_

_“You know well what could happen.”_

_“This Thanos,” He gestured towards the stars, to the galaxies that had once cowered under Asgard’s might. “Is he mightier than me?”_

_Loki folded his hands in front of himself, expression furrowing in thought. He considered the question._

_“Not as he is, perhaps. But with the stones, yes.”_

_“Then we don’t let him have them.”_

_“And how do you propose we do that?”_

_Thor shrugged, making a fist and swinging it low in a familiar pantomime that suggested hitting something with Mjolnir._

_“Not all problems can be solved by hitting them, brother.” Loki bit out, barely tolerant, but Thor thought he saw a smirk twitch on his lips. “And you don’t have your hammer. In case you’ve forgotten.”_

_“Hitting things has worked so far. Anyway, that’s why you’re here.”_

_“And what happens when I’m not here?”_

_The question hung heavily in the air. Thor stared at him with his one good eye, affronted._

_“Loki—”_

_“No. Listen to me.” Loki’s reflection stared back at himself in the window, flat and vulnerable. But he suffered it, unable to look at his brother. “If Thanos comes…” He swallowed hard past the denial, grappling with the truth. “When Thanos comes, I will die. Half of whomever Valkyrie and Heimdall can’t escape with will die. Do you hear me?”_

_“I won’t let that happen.”_

_“This plan,” He shook his head, gesturing dismissively at nothing. “The Hulk is formidable, but it’s not enough.”_

_“It is.”_

_“It’s not.”_

_“It has to be.”_

_“If he has a stone, even just one, it’s not.” Loki’s jaw set, cut with tension. His eyes flickered to Thor’s reflection. “And if one of us has to die, I won’t let it be you.”_

_“You will_ . _”_

_“I won’t.” He blinked away the fear misting his eyes. “The moment I failed to conquer Midgard, my fate was decided. There’s so much you don’t know.”_

_“Loki, no.” Loki found himself taken by the shoulders, forcibly turned to face his brother. Where he’d been able to temper his emotions, Thor hadn’t - or possibly couldn’t, Loki thought, as Thor had never been accustomed to hiding bouts of madness. “I won’t let you die. You’re all I have left.”_

_The shadow came then, cutting off the light of a nearby sun, casting them all in a darkness that they’d never escape. Loki looked to the heavens and paled, any errant thoughts dying on his tongue; Thor gazed on death and steeled himself for it. Thanos and his sanctuary were here._

_“Well then, brother.” The alarms sounded. Somewhere, the Hulk roared. “I suppose you’ll have to prove it.”_

* * *

“I’m here,” Steve said, and somehow Thor found himself easing his brother down on the pyre, carefully cradling his brother’s neck as they laid him down for the last time.

_Oh, brother._

He pretended not to notice how his hands shook as he gently posed Loki on the logs, making sure to position his head in a way that hid the fatal break of his spine. Loki’s skin was pale, colder than cold, and his arms had grown stiff by the time Thor crossed them over his chest.

Was this really him? Was this not another illusion, another trick? Thor had never welcomed Loki’s deceptions before, and, knowing that, he knew that if he welcomed them now, Loki wouldn’t be kind enough to humor him. That was how brothers were, after all. Only doing what they pleased to the pleasure of no one else.

“Thor?”

He cleared his throat, blinking back into focus on Loki’s face. Heat lightning flashed through the sky, dancing between the clouds to cast odd shadows and light through the night. At least the rain had stopped.

“Thank you, my friend,” he managed, finally looking away from the corpse that had been Loki. “I thought… I didn’t realize it would be so difficult. Stupid of me.”

“It’s not stupid,” Steve said, genuinely kind. He pushed his hand through his hair, standing a few respectful paces away from the pyres. He looked tired. “None of this is easy.”

“But it is,” Thor insisted. “All of this… it’s stupid. Stupid of him.”

A dagger. That was the sight that would haunt Thor for the rest of his life: his little brother, one of the most vicious, clever, merciless men in the Nine trying to fell a Titan with a _dagger._ This was a God who’d destroyed realms; who’d overthrown Odin All-Father, King of Asgard. Yet he faced death with a knife? It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense.

“Doesn’t sound like you had much of a choice.” Steve tried. “None of us did.”

“And you?” he wondered. “Why are you here? Loki was no friend of yours.”

Steve glanced up, then let his gaze flicker away. He took a seat on a fallen log, folding his arms over his knees.

“Would you believe it’s just me being a good friend?”

“No.” Thor said, not unkindly. Steve shook his head, laughing shortly.

“Tony’s back,” he confessed, as if that meant something. Thor watched him pick at his fingernails. “Wanted to give him some space. But.” He looked back up to him, away from the dirt and singed grass. “I’ve got no one to bury and… I didn’t want you to be alone.”

That he believed. He nodded, grateful. “Aye. You’re a good friend, Steve.”

He nodded in turn, pursing his lips. Thor let himself gravitate back towards the task at hand, leaving Steve to examine the Bifrost sword that wouldn’t be burned with its Master.  

“You know…” Forcing more memories down, smothering them with numbness, he turned back towards his brother. Carefully, he brushed a couple of dirty, dark locks of hair into place, trying to make him presentable. For who, he didn’t know. The Avengers certainly wouldn’t care. “It stills feels like him. Like a trick.”

The presence of seidhr was subtle, nearly lost by the fact that it was as much a part of Loki as blood and daggers were. It pricked against Thor’s palm like a dull needle, weak and feeble, draped across the body in a static undercurrent of power. A reminder of what had been.

“Thor?”

“I mean his magic,” he explained, realizing how mad he must sound. “Seidhr, we call it. It was always his thing, not mine, but you get hit in the face with it enough and you learn to sense it.” Thor’s smile was genuine, if not bittersweet. Magic bristled when he straightened his brother’s collar, no less strong than it had been before. “…It’s still here.”

Steve leaned forward, turning Heimdall’s blade over in his hands. His fingers traced over the engravings in the golden hilt, appreciative. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t know.”

His hand wandered across it, from face to chest. Loki didn’t twitch, didn’t so much as flutter an eyelid. It wasn’t like one of his illusions, opaque and energy rich, pulsing magic at the center of whatever it was he wanted you to see. This shrouded him. He wore it. And it spoke, in the way that magic often does, to the one that dared to touch it.

It made promises. Oaths to reveal secrets and lies, all finely packaged, hidden away where nothing was meant to be found — Thor need only break it, to _try_ , to _see what happens._ It begged to be unmade. Without magic to sustain it, what was existence? Why strain to maintain when _everything, absolutely everything_ could be revealed with just a wish? A single spark? Magic could be sentient in the same way it could be strange, and in that, it could speak, prideful of its unpredictability. It buzzed against his skin, electric, quickly growing more insistent. If he pressed _just_ right, if he summoned a bolt of lightning and _pushed_...

There was a rumble, a spark, and then everything unraveled. Loki’s magic was unbound.

* * *

 

When Asgard burned, it exploded through the cosmos in fire and light.

When its people burned, they turned to starlight, dusted throughout the galaxy in shining, shimmering mists of memory and power.

When Heimdall was laid to rest, he seemed to burn brightest. Above, the sky glittered its goodbyes to him, their eternal Watcher, who’d protected them for millenia.

When Loki burned, there was no mist. No remembrance from the stars. No beautiful send off to the heavens, where he might go to meet his parents in Valhalla. There was just ash and his brother’s tears, a prayer muttered for a Jotun burned on Midgard, where his name meant nothing but fear and destruction.

But there was still a legacy left behind.

Loki’s unbound magic had released all his summonings and secrets; dispelled his glamour, Asgardian-white, and left him an honest blue, carved in the same shape and embellished with raised lines of Jotun heritage. Heaps of daggers had fallen from his wrists. Bundles of armor and clothes had slipped free from the folds of his cape. All the secret, treasured parts of Asgard’s Vault had spilled out from his chest, stolen away in the last moments with the Tesseract, kept safe from Surtur’s flame and the End of Everything.

Thor was left with Asgard — with everything that had been and a promise of what could be. The heavy, familiar thoughts of the home felt comforting for the first time (the weight of Gungnir in his hand, of Stormbreaker at his side) and the priceless, foolish sentiments his brother had given him filled his heart to bursting.

So Thor would take the ashes that had been Loki in hand, gathering them in a bag to hang on his hip, meaning to spread them across whatever new land he’d claim for his people. He would take his brother’s horned helm and his daggers, along with all the secret things he’d hidden away, and rebuild Asgard with his memory close to heart.

Loki died. What was burned stayed dead, and Odin’s ravens, freed from their captivity, cursed his grave as they flew by. Few mourned his passing and many celebrated it – Loki, of Asgard, of Jotunheim, the rightful King of both and the God of Mischief, was no more.

Had Hel not hated him with such an astonishing passion, perhaps he might’ve stayed dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double post today, finishing out part one and starting up part two. Go on ahead, but let me know your thoughts down below.
> 
>  
> 
> Also: [remember to subscribe/bookmark](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1112343) the full series if you'd like to follow it, as this work is broken out into multiple parts.


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